The quest to create the first frybrid

If you're driving through town and you see a "Veggie Mobile" - do not be alarmed - it's just the students from Petoskey High School attempting to create the first "frybrid" in Northern Michigan.

During the 2007-08 school year, students from several departments within the school, including physics, chemistry, automotive, art and culinary arts worked together as one to perfect the look and performance of a 1981 Oldsmobile which ran on both diesel fuel and vegetable oil.

The car was donated to the school at the beginning of the school year by Harbor Springs resident Mike McDonald, who originally had the car up for sale for $1,500.

Advertisement

At the time, McDonald's son, Stewart, who originally converted the car to run on both vegetable oil and diesel in 2006 during an independent study in physics at Harbor Springs High School, was away at college.

Stewart said when he heard about his father's generosity, he was extremely proud.

"It was a smart choice on his part - it's pretty cool that the car got to maintain being an educational tool because that's how it started with me," he said. "It will help more people in the long run."

Lance Bailey, physics teacher at Petoskey High School, initially had the plan to have his honors physics students work hands-on with the vehicle to make it more efficient.

However, he said, once word got around, his small classroom assignment snowballed into a school-wide project where the auto students were helping attach new hubcaps and giving the car a new paint job; the culinary arts students were donating their used vegetable oil; an art student, 16-year-old Erica Syverson, was creating the "Veggie Mobile" name and logo; and the chemistry students began researching and experimenting with bio-diesel fuel.

Bailey said the project has taken on a life of it's own, and reached the students on a whole new level.

"When I look at this car I see the strength of the student body and really just a bunch of ingenious ideas and hard work from a bunch of talented students," he said. "What's been most fulfilling to me is that we're (the physics department) not isolated in our own section of the school, we have our kids respecting each other in the different departments.

"If you get high school kids excited about something where they're passionate, that's a huge victory," Bailey said.

Donnie Clark, a 2008 graduate of Petoskey High School and member of Bailey's honors physics class, said he enjoyed being a part of something so innovative.

"We can consider ourselves pioneers," he said. "I feel like it was an honor to be part of something that could be world changing at some point or another - between the stage of gasoline and the next fuel."

Josh Mueller, also a 2008 graduate of Petoskey High School, said he doesn't believe by making the Veggie Mobile that the students have solved the world's energy problem.

"There is not enough vegetable oil to power the United States, let alone the whole world," he said. "I don't think the solution will be just one thing, I think wind power, hydrogen and vegetable oil - all sorts of different things will be implemented in the future."

As for the Veggie Mobile's future, Bailey said the school has plans during the upcoming 2008-09 school year to convert the car to run strictly on vegetable oil and bio-diesel.

"Next year was spurred on by the kids," he said. "We're going to make a fossil-free car - no more diesel. We always joke about it being the first 'frybrid,' instead of hybrid, in Northern Michigan."